Conan vs. Cthulu, implications for RPGs Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Here on DSF there are lots of people who are super knowledgable about such topics as Cthuhlu and D&D and Conan and it was thanks to the information provided to some people here to me that I was able to go to a bookstore and buy those recent editions of Howard's Conan stories where they are as close as possible to Howard's writing unedited by De Camp. So I've been reading lots of Conan lately.

I've noticed how in some stories Conan actually comes in contact with Lovecraftian sanity-destroying whatnots from the Outer Dark but because he's Conan he avoids having his sanity ripped away and he also is able to pwn some of the sanity destroying creatures. It seems very likely that these types of situations are directly influenced by the writing of Lovecraft since it seems that Howard and Lovecraft corresponded and liked each others' writing.

Since I have a one-track mind I immediately started thinking about what this could mean in the context of RPGs dealing with fantasy themes and Cthuhlu themes.

In the first place, Call of Cthuhlu games are often emphasizing how the monsters are huge and scary and your sanity WILL be ripped away after you're half eaten. I've made some other posts on DSF about how I believe that in modern times characters should have a better chance to pwn Lovecraftian horrors through superior firepower. But what about in classic fantasy medieval settings? You would think that with only swords and arrows your medieval heroes would be nearly defenseless against Lovecraftian horrors.

And yet look at Conan. Time and time again he resists losing his sanity due to his ultra barbaric sensibilities and is able to pwn great big scary monsters basically by going nuts and stabbing them really hard and really fast. It's really about the primal purity of raging barbaric thews against the unknowable greater existential horror and how this rugged vitality is after all able to prevail.

From Queen of the Black Coast (overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_the_Black_Coast )

[Whipstitch]

I'd say you can't make a Conan with the standard D&D rules. He'd really just be a multiclass Barbarian/Rogue/Fighter except with two rather crucial differences: His super powers are killing things and not taking shit from anyone. I'm pretty certain the man's pinky finger could be considered a +238902840804802 magical weapon for the purposes of bypassing magical damage reduction. I mean, yeah, he's mortal, but apparently so are Gods, it just hadn't been proven yet until the ol' Cimmerian took a crack at it.

Anyway, to be a nit picky bastard, I must say that Conan's mindset is actually rather representative of much of the warrior art and ritual of classical antiquity. Admonishments to remember that you are mortal and to seize the day were a common theme. The medieval mindset, on the other hand, is rather in opposition to Conan's stoic hedonism; the theme of death and mortality was hijacked and pressed into Christian service as a reminder that mortality was but a prelude to the afterlife and its implications.

Or, at least that's the kind of shit I learned to spew out for papers in Humanities.

[Critias]

It's possible to make Conan (they've done so for the Conan d20 stuff, obviously) -- but he's the sort of character that's 10 levels or so ahead of everyone else (including the GM's campaign threat level), and his sheet's the sort of thing everyone would look at and go "eww, what a munchkin!"

Because he's, well, Conan. The main character, and the archetypical asskicker with a sword.

[hyzmarca]

D&D attempts to have Cthuloid threats. Just look at the Mind Flayers, octopus-headed guys who use psionic powers to destroy your sanity before sucking your brain out and eating it. They're very obviously Cthulu inspired. They're entire point is the be the festering abominations that man was not meant to know. And for a low-level party they're very scary. But, they aren't existentially scary. They may have been once, but now they're just Red Dragon scary. And once the characters reach a certain level its "Meh, another mind-flayer" and the former scariest race in the game has to be supplemented by Mind Flayer Vampires and Mind Flayer Liches, and even Mind Flayer Dragons.

Various Chaotic Evil deities and demi-deities can fill the role of Lovecraftian Horror and some obviously were intended to do so. But, in the end, they all suffer from the adage if it has stats, you can kill it. Any character who level grinds and chooses his path wisely can slay even the most powerful deity.

[DTFarstar]

I would like to point out that just like in Conan's world, EVERYTHING in DnD is mortal. I mean there is a book for statting out "Deities". They are amazingly badass, but visit the char-op forums and tell me they can't be taken down. I think you could definitely make a Conan. I mean he would be level 20-ish or significantly higher, but you could still make him.

[Mercer]

My pick would be Conan in four rounds, unless Dagon throws his hat in the ring and then its anybody's match.

More seriously, D&D suffers (or enjoys) a system-wide implication that-- in the words of Gary Jackson-- if it has stats, we can kill it. In Call of Cthulhu, seeing a partially decomposed corpse feasting on someone's liver will likely cause you to crap your brain out your ass; in D&D its a light day, even for first level characters. Further, players will enjoy both in their proper context, but will tend to be dissatisfied with CoC ghouls that die too easily or D&D ghouls that are supposed to inspire any emotion other than a desire for a slashing weapon and a 5' hex to stand in. This isn't because the systems are all the different, its just the baggage we bring to the table.

Howard designed Conan to be the baddest mofo on the planet. If there were a badder mofo, Howard would have chronicled his adventures. So whatever rules you use, he'd have to be the baddest mofo in the system. But that doesn't make for the most exciting game in the world. (For example, the final battle in Willow isn't nearly as exciting if you know General Kael is a 12th level fighter, and Madmartigan is a 20th level fighter-- going by the AD&D/Willow adaptation a friend of mine in high school owned.) For D&D versions of Conan, you could do worse than this one, although I think any adaptation is bound to be unsatisfying.

By the same token, most versions of the Call of Cthulhu game (including the last one I read, maybe 5th edition, d20 compatible) include ways to port the monsters into D&D, including Cthulhu. But even the book conversions aren't exactly awe-inspiring (or even brain-crappingly terrifying). Its something like a CR 25 monster who's Will Save inducing fear save is roughly on par with that of a comparable dragon. As with the Conan rpg adaptations, it doesn't really capture the essence of the stories.

But then, most games don't. Games tend to have more in common with the wargames they were based off of than the literary sources that inspired them. Whether or not a protagonist in a Lovecraft story survived (they usually didn't) or whether or not a protagonist in a Howard story prevailed (they usually did) didn't have anything to do with stats, odds, chance or challenge. Characters lived, died or went batshit insane based on whatever was best for the story; and that dynamic is hard to capture in a game. Ultimately, that's why I say making Conan in D&D (or even in Conan d20) is doomed to failure. You can make a character a heck of a lot like Conan-- and let's be honest, most of us have-- but its a different animal. (Conan can only crit fumble his attack, flunk his balance check and get dropped by a hobgoblin so many times before the magic dies, you know?)

If I were going to run a horror-style game (Lovecraftian or not), I wouldn't use D&D. (System Does Matter. Ron Edwards has a tendency to be an insufferable ass, but he does occasionally make a point I agree with. Like this.) I ran a Night of the Living Dead game for D&D three years ago that some of my players are still pissed about. (They're also pissed about a SR game I ran over a decade ago, so let's just say they know how to hold a grudge.) 90% of the problem was despite weeks of me selling the game as "Survival Horror" in the most blatant terms possible, at the table the players couldn't shake the D&D mindset. They could play one session of Survival Horror, but the next session old habits would come out. Two TPK's in four sessions, six frustrated gamers, accusations flying-- that's not a road I want to go down again any time soon.

How the mind-rippingly bizarre horrors (excuse me, I meant brain-crappingly bizarre horrors) affect the characters is less of a concern to me than how SAN Loss will affect the players. In D&D, telling a player that his 23rd level minotaur barbarian chieften who carries around his gear in a bag made from a red dragon's nutsack needs to roll to see if a fishman scares him isn't going to go over-- and I don't think that its just a case of player-whining. I mean, forget monsters, with 3e templates, some characters are weirder than Lovecraftian horrors. (I'm running an intermittant Pirates of the Sunless Sea game right now that has a vampire priest of tiamat and a half-drow-illithid crossbreed. Those types of characters should impose SAN checks rather than roll them. Granted, not the norm, but its a game about underdark pirates.)

[CircuitBoyBlue]

My D&D group (we play hack-n-slash dungeon crawls, and get our actual RPing kicks with other games) meets every other week, and in the off weeks, we've been plaing Call of Cthulhu. I'd been running it, since I've got a lot of experience with CoC, and after the last session, the players, many of whom had never played anyting other than D&D, said they really liked it and wanted to play more. I told them if I was going to run more CoC, I wanted it to be different, and one of them jokingly mentioned that it should be set after the "Cthulhu Apocalypse" (the campaign got a little rough for the investigators there at the end, and they had every reason to believe that the events they'd put in motion would have eventually destroyed the world). Needless to say, it wasn't long after someone said "Cthulhu Apocalypse" that someone said "Cthulhu Mad Max." So now I need to figure out how to run an RPG set in the Mad Max world, or at least one like it, only incorporating the Cthulhu Mythos. My biggest problem so far has been that I have no idea what system to use. I don't want to use CoC, because I want better combat rules, and depending on exactly what the "Cthulhu Apocalypse" IS, there may or may not be lots and lots of Mythos beings, and I don't want the players losing their minds before we've gotten a good dozen sessions or so in. I was thinking maybe d20 of some sort, though I really know nothing about it (other than that they defiled my precious Cthulhu). But it's strangely counterintuitive trying to string this all together, because for once, I WANT Mythos beings to be less about destroying your sanity, and more of a physical threat. I figure that we can get some RP mileage out of the characters just finding the things to be WEIRD, and unnatural, and probably fail a bunch of Fear saves or something. But living in a post-apocalyptic environment, they'll probably be rather de-sensitized to that sort of thing

[Synner667]

[Synner667]

[Synner667]

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Thanks for the suggestions, but we've GOT a background in mind (kind of), with the whole "Mad Max" thing. It's an actual rule system that I'm looking around for.

And yes, I think I get that a lot with CoC, too. I think CoC has a scary reputation, so players are afraid to let anything get physical.

[hyzmarca]

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/det...l.php?qsID=1353

http://www.cthulhutech.com/

It looks like they have gotten around to publishing Cthulhutech, the game which postulates what would happen if Cthulhu woke up in the middle of Neon Genesis Evangelion, sans the fan-fuck ending and highly inappropriate masturbation (though I suppose that players can add them in).


Giant monsters are substantially less frightening when one has giant robots.

[Critias]

If your buddies are looking for something to be set after the "Cthulu Apocalypse," check out the Vampire Earth novels by E E Knight.

[Kagetenshi]

Mercer, how much Lovecraft have you read? At least from what I've read thus far (probably around a third of his works, mostly the earlier portions), the protagonist routinely survives—maybe a little bit less routinely depending on how you define "protagonist" for some of them. It's relatively uncommon that the protagonist triumphs, or that even when they can be said to triumph they end up doing anything other than being essentially scarred for life, but mere survival is almost expected—many of the stories are narrated by one candidate for protagonist after-the-fact.

~J

[Mercer]

I've read most of H.P. Lovecraft (say 80%, concentrating more on his short stories than longer works), and he was fond of the first person narrator who usually survived to tell the tale. Without getting into spoilers, I'm thinking of stories like Pickman's Model or the Whisperer in the Darkness, where the narrator is the guy in the situation who has the least idea what's going on. Narrators who get the whole story (The Rats in the Walls, or Shadows over Innsmouth) tend to get a lot more than they bargained for. (I know that his works tend to be split up between the earlier horror stuff, the Dream Cycle, and the Cthulhu mythos, its all hit with the same stick as far as I'm concerned.)

[DireRadiant]

Isn't it still the difference between the all conquering hero and the guy who survived because he didn't know anything and thus was far away when something Awful Happened?

[Mercer]

Lovecraft was fond of the 1st person narrators who were a little behind the reader because he thought it would heighten the reader's dread if they figured out what was going on before the narrator did. (At least, I read that on the internet so it must be true, right? Right?) It's the classic movie audience cry of, "Don't go up there, there's an axe murderer up there!" (I mean, why does she go up there? There's an axe murderer up there.) The narrator of any given Lovecraft story would be the character in the Call of Cthulhu game who hardly ever has to make a SAN check because he can't succeed on a friggin' Perception check. A lot of the time (not all the time, but a lot of the time) the narrator's SAN check comes in the last line of the story.

Personally, while I liked Call of Cthulhu games, I never liked the system. I mean, the imagery and the feel of the games were gold, because we were drawing on all the fear and dread we had stored up from reading a lot of Lovecraft. But the system was always a wreck that turned the horror game into a half-assed D&D simulacrum. Any system that says, "To even conceive of these monsters is to go mad, and by the way, here are there stats: Deep One 2d8+4 hp, +3 Claw for d6+2 damage..." just isn't going to get very far with me.

[Glyph]

This was on another thread, but I think it's relevant for this discussion. Quoting Wounded Ronin, quoting David C. Smith:

[Whipstitch]

...Animals are very logical. They're not capable of much else. They are (and I'm including us in here as well, to an extent) simply well, bad at being logical. We're literally all spending our lives stumbling around piecing together the difference between causation and correlation every day, we just don't think about it in those terms and as such happily run smack into bad premises all the time. I agree with his stance that many people wish to put this kind of thing behind them, but I don't think it's snobbishness, per se, so much as it really is just a pure lack of interest. Nihilism is in many ways an academic dead end; even if it did bring new ideas to the table it would also argue that those ideas don't actually matter in the first place. The country mouse vs. city mouse conflict is an apt analogy, but I'd say it's really more like the pope debating with a moral nihilist. Even if there could be a constructive conversation there neither of which are likely to be interested for very long.

[Platinum]

A gnit pick, because I have not completely read all through the thread.

Animals are not logical ... they are instinctive which is a totally different area of the brain.

Most Nihilism is primal and instinctive. Snobbiness and elitism are higher brain functions.

[Whipstitch]

n/m